Favorite travel books
 

Hello all. I love to read and love reading travel narrative type books. I just finished Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon. It really showed a side of Portland not talked about in the travel books! I'm not sure I'd want to visit some of the places Palahnuik mentions, except for the Shanghai Tunnels tour - that sounded fascinating.

I'm always looking for a good travel book (and although I read travel guide books like Fodors before a trip, I'm not referring to those type, but the travel narrative type). What are your US favorites?

Here are some of mine:

Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey (Southwest)
Soul of Nowhere - Childs (Southwest)
Backbone of the World (American west)
Whiteout - Ted Conover (Aspen)
Death in the Grand Canyon
It Takes A Village Idiot - Mullin (Manhattan and rural NY; this is a really funny book about a guy who bought a second home in rural NY)
Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson (and the book where he tours America - I love Bill Bryson!!)
Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need - Dave Barry (Isn't Dave Barry great? I think he's so funny)

I will probably think of a half dozen more after I send this. What good books have I missed?? Karen

Karen
The Outermost House by Henry Beston ""a year of life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod""
Not really travel...intense observation...very beautiful book!

All time favorite: "Indian Country" by Tony Hillerman (author of the Jim Chee novels). I planned my first trip out west based on much of this book, and the book and the trip were both marvelous.

Charles Kuralt's America. After his retirement, Kuralt spent a month each in twelve of his favorite places then wrote the best book he ever wrote describing them.

"Blue Latitudes" by Tony Horwitz, retracing Captain Cook's voyages.

Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes
A Visit to Don Ottavio by Sybille Bedford
anything by Paul Theroux
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

These spring to mind...

Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon

Dark Star - Paul Theroux's newest; stark and at times disturbing but it's an unflinching look at some of Africa's current problems from a first person perspective (I disagree with the reviewers who panned this book)

A Single Pebble - John Hersey's 1960's book about a man's voyage down the Yangtze River - it's both a spiritual and a physical journey and quite compelling

Highway 61 by William McKeen: a professor & his son drive Hy 61, especially focusing on towns and cities with a rock n roll or blues history

Thanks, all. Bailey, if you like book on Cape Cod you might find interesting a book I just finished. It's called Invisible Eden. It's about the murder of fashion writer Christa Worthington in Truro. I wasn't familar with this unsolved case until I read the book. There's been no arrests in the case, and the author doesn't say who she thinks might have done it.
A while ago I read another interesting book by a man who worked as a police office in Wellfleet. The title escapes me.